LIVE UPDATE: Kevin McCarthy loses 2nd vote for House Speaker in first multi-ballot event in 100 years. ABC Special Report streaming now.
Needing 218 votes in the full House, McCarthy got just 203 in both rounds - less even that Democrat Hakeem Jeffries in the GOP-controlled chamber.
The mood was tense, at least on the Republican side, as lawmakers rose from their seats, in a lengthy first round of in-person voting. Democrats were joyous as they cast their own historic votes for their leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York. The group said McCarthy refused the group's last-ditch offer for rules changes in a meeting late Monday at the Capitol.
A new generation of Trump-aligned Republicans led the opposition to McCarthy. They don't think he is conservative enough or tough enough to battle Democrats. It's reminiscent of the last time Republicans took back the House majority, after the 2010 midterms, when the tea-party class ushered in a new era of hardball politics, eventually sending Speaker John Boehner to an early retirement.With just 222 GOP seats, McCarthy could afford to lose only a handful of their votes.
Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., a leader of a more pragmatic conservative group, said "frustration was rising" with the minority faction.The second-ranking House Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, could be a next choice, a conservative widely liked by his colleagues and seen by some as a hero after surviving a gunshot wound suffered during a congressional baseball game practice in 2017.
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